Welcome!

Freelancing is tough.

It involves hustling all the time, suffering through feast-or-famine cycles of payment, stress, and isolation. Freelancers work crazy hours early in the mornings and late into the night. The work can be exhausting, draining, and lonely. Your partner, family and friends don’t always understand what you’re going through. You may work from a laptop with a tiny screen on your kitchen table, causing eyestrain and wrist pain, while those lucky dogs in office jobs have Aeron chairs, large monitors, and on-site ergonomics consultants. You thought that bowl of M&Ms on your coworker’s desk was a temptation? Try having your entire fridge and pantry just a room away. Thought it was hard to get to the gym? Some freelancers have to really work to recall the last time they left their house.

And the worst part, for many people? You’re doing this on your own. You don’t have a coworker to share snacks (and frustrations) with. You don’t have group wellness challenges like many companies have. Freelancing can be lonely. Trying to stay healthy can be lonely. Put those two together and you have a double-whammy of isolation.

It’s not just freelancers. Telecommuters and virtual workers suffer many of the same problems. They may not have to worry about where their next paycheck is coming from, since they have a steady job, but working in your house is still very different from working in an office. Telecommuters still need to deal with temptations from the fridge, bad posture, and nobody to talk to but the houseplants.

Luckily, there’s hope.

Freelancing doesn’t have to destroy your health. It’s absolutely possible to get the perks of freelancing without harming your physical or mental health. You can exercise and eat just as well as an office worker, if not better. You truly can work from anywhere–making that tropical vacation less out of reach than ever. And if you pop out early for a massage every now and then? Nobody’s gonna tell on you.

You may be on your own, but you’re not alone.

The Healthy Freelancer is an ebook about how to preserve your health and your sanity while hustling from home. It will be released in late 2015. Watch this space for updates.